Tuesday, 6 March 2012

In the vein of something I posted some time ago, I was reading objections from The Lancet to the DSM 5 removing grief as an exception to major depression. The story can be read here or on The Lancet website. It does force one to ask in what world is two months too long to grieve; I know people who have had meds pushed on them after such a short period. The Lancet suggests the motivation for the change may be greed--more people to foist pills on to. I'm not entirely sure that's the only reason.

From a Christian perspective, the development goes to show that not only is the "guilt perspective" of the western church being medicalized away, so now is the pain of death being pathologized. Pretty soon there's not going to be anything left for Jesus to save us from, people. We'll have done it all ourselves. Right?? Yes, we'll still be guilty. We'll still die. But you see it won't matter in the long run. We'll have masked and explained away and treated all the negative symptoms of the decay that is endemic in the human race without having to deal with God at all. And without having actually fixed a thing. Oh brave new world that has such creatures in it.

The quote from Philippe Aries was illuminating:

Death must simply become the discreet but dignified exit of a
peaceful person from a helpful society that is not torn, not even
overly upset by the idea of a biological transition without
significance, without pain or suffering, and ultimately without fear.

Yeah. We may think we can dress the wound as deep as the sea with a bandaid and say peace, peace, but there is only one way off of the one way ride to oblivion; to throw yourself on the mercy of the one stronger than death, your guilt and everything else. Solus Christus.